Ash London: "I was in the middle of the best year of my life when I started to panic".

In fact, I’ve always been quite the opposite. Taking things in my stride – the good and the bad – and getting on with life like a boss lady. It wasn’t until the best year of my life that I started to feel the dreaded panic.

It’s weird, isn’t it? Everything is going your way, your dreams are coming true, and instead of cartwheeling through fields of gold like a girl in a tampon commercial, you’re lying in bed too anxious to sleep.

Sometimes it’s like my very own private movie screening. Except the movie is just a highlight reel of everything I could have done better today, this week, or at some point in the past 32 years of life. Let’s just say it’s a pretty shitty film that, had you paid $22 to see at the cinema you’d probably walk out of.

I’ve had an incredible year professionally and personally. I love my work as a radio host, and just recently I’ve had the opportunity to return to television on Channel Ten’s new show Game of Games. It’s wonderful, silly fun. I fell in love, got married, bought a house. The whole kit and kaboodle. The kind of year that I would have put on a vision board at 21 had I ever been organised enough to make a vision board.

As a busy woman, the age-old ‘how do you fit it all in?’ question comes up often. The truthful answer is that there are times that I felt like I haven’t. Those times have included lying on the floor of my hotel room in London on a work trip too anxious to get on a plane home, hiding under the covers for two days after being mercilessly trolled online by half a million One Direction fans, or simply having an afternoon teary at work for reasons I still don’t understand.

My salvation so to speak has come in an unexpected place. Something that comes free, requires no equipment and can be done any time of day or night.

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Meditation.

I can hear the eye rolls. Like coffee scrubs, lip filler, those charcoal nose strips and tae-bo back in 1995, I’ve bought in to the latest fad to hit women in their 30’s, but I can honestly say that unlike the aforementioned crazes this one is changing the way I relate to myself and others in a profound way.

Simply put, mindfulness meditation is the practice of bringing your awareness and intention to the present moment without judgement. So if your mind is wandering off to think about a presentation you’ve got to make at work today… that’s OK. No judgment. We’re cool. We call it ‘practice’ for a reason.

Sometime it’s as easy as sitting in silence and listening to the sound of my own breath. A beautiful, gentle reminder that I am here, that I am breathing, and that the only moment I ever really have is the one right now.The past is gone, and the future doesn’t exist yet.

My wish for you is that you find even five minutes to put your phone away, and let yourself off the hook. Put the laundry list of to-dos away, and take the time to really check in with yourself. Befriend yourself. Be with yourself in a world that is fighting for your attention.

If you’re living in Melbourne, I invite you to join me for a group class at KNDRD Meditation – a safe and uplifting place to explore your own practice.

And if you really can’t meditate and absolutely need to switch off, you can always tune in to Game of Games 7:30pm Sunday nights on Ten. Because if you can’t meditate, you may as well laugh!